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RISING PHOENIX
CHAPTER 1 dead tapia
Caracas, Venezuela

Miguel Tapia pulled his 1985 Mercedes coupe into the central stall of his three-car garage. He switched off the engine of the aging vehicle and breathed a sigh of relief before pressing the remote to close the garage door, shutting out the world.
Like every other night, it was a struggle to make it home through the poverty-stricken city to his luxurious country home after a long day of working in the Federal Legislative Palace, known to the Venezuelans as the Capitolio.
The government official often felt strained to the bone as he labored under his boss, the Minister of Economy and Finance. Yet, he felt good things were coming and that the minister would soon appoint him to a higher position of authority.
Tapia pocketed his keys as he slipped out of the car, then retrieved his suit jacket from the back seat. He hoped his wife, Isabel, had fixed something delicious for dinner tonight.
Stepping into the house, Tapia glanced around. Usually, Isabel was laboring in the kitchen at this time of night, happily humming a tune while the scents of cooking meat, boiling rice, and grilling vegetables filled the home.
Tossing his jacket over the back of the couch, he called out to his wife. “Isabel! Where are you?”
She didn’t answer. Their modern kitchen, filled with granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances, felt like a tomb without her presence. Isabel had freshly scrubbed the counters as if she were preparing to cook, yet the stove burners were cold. It was unlike Isabel to abandon her duties. She had faithfully prepared the evening meal for over thirty years, serving their children and grandchildren at the big dining room table.
Tapia shivered. Something was terribly wrong. The knowledge that Isabel might be in trouble made his bones ache.
The house was what many Americans would call a McMansion, a word Tapia had picked up during his days at the University of Miami before Hugo Chávez had made going to college in the United States all but impossible. Only government officials could travel to the U.S. anymore, and only if the State Department invited them. Although the U.S. had imposed harsh sanctions in the past, the two countries were trying to mend their relations because Venezuela had what the U.S. craved the most—oil.
“Iz!” Tapia shouted. “Isabel!”
Still, there was no response. The air felt stifling, and the house was so quiet that he could hear the air conditioner kick on. Cool air blew from the vents, but it did nothing for the sweat beading on the brow of the frantic husband.
Tapia headed for the courtyard, intent on finding his wife. The house formed a square around the courtyard where a sparkling blue pool was the center of activity anytime his grandchildren would stop over. Tapia had always loved the outdoor feel of the courtyard with the many potted plants and hanging ferns Isabel tended to each day. The relaxing atmosphere made the courtyard an inviting place to sit and reflect, but right then, the environment did little to quell the panic rising in his chest. Tapia didn’t know what he would do without his beautiful Isabel.
He poked his head into the various rooms off the courtyard until he came to the master bedroom. Placing his hand on the doorknob, the knot of dread tightened in Tapia’s gut. He had wondered when this day would arrive. For years, he’d been passing information to CIA spies who had operated out of the U.S. embassy until former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had ordered it closed in 2019, forcing Tapia to resort to old school dead drops to communicate with his handler.
While Tapia loved his country, he hated seeing what Chávez and his self-appointed successor, Michel Zarate, had done to it, turning the greatest economy in South America, maybe even the world, into one of abject poverty and deprivation. In the early years, when Venezuela had been prosperous, there had been little information to pass, mainly technical specs on oil well production or new military hardware purchases, but the last few years had been fruitful, a variable spigot of information about the inner workings of Zarate’s brutal communist regime.
Twisting the doorknob, Tapia stepped into the darkened bedroom. Isabel sat on the bed, her hands and feet bound, a gag stuffed into her mouth. Even in the low light streaming over his shoulder through the open door, Tapia could see the tears coursing down his wife’s cheeks.
Slowly, Tapia took in the three other people in the room.
A man was on his knees beside the bed, a black bag over his head and his hands bound behind his back. Behind him stood two men who wore black balaclavas and dark clothing. One held a silenced pistol at his side while the other carried an Israeli-made Uzi submachine gun at port arms.
“Glad you could join us,” the man with the pistol said to Tapia in Spanish, their native tongue. “Close the door.”
Tapia complied with the order, hoping this was just a simple ransom situation and not retribution for his work with the Americans. The only hitch in that scenario was that he had no clue who the man on his knees was.
“I have money,” Tapia said.
“Where?” the pistolero asked.
“In a safe in my office,” Tapia replied.
“Show me,” the gunman said.
Tapia led the masked man through the house to his office and opened the safe hidden behind a large, framed photo of Simón Bolívar: The Liberator of Latin America. The safe contained passports for him and Isabel, various government documents, the deed to the house, and fifty thousand dollars cash in cherished U.S. greenbacks.
The pistolero tossed the money into a bag and, twitching the muzzle of his pistol, told Tapia that he should head for the bedroom. Much relieved that the man had taken the money, Tapia hoped this hostage crisis would soon end.
Inside the bedroom, the pistolero waited for Tapia to face him, then, without warning, raised his pistol and shot the kneeling man in the forehead, toppling him over backward, the hood capturing the spray of blood and brain matter that would have otherwise ruined the rose-patterned wallpaper, handpicked by Isabel decades ago.
Without being ordered, the man with the Uzi bent down. He pulled the hood off the stranger, revealing the bruised and battered face of Luis Garcia, Tapia’s friend and CIA handler.
Isabel tried to scream, but it came out as a muffled cry behind her gag. Garcia had been to their home many times to break bread with the Tapia family, and now he lay dead on their terracotta tile floor.
Panic clutched Tapia around the chest like a vise, squeezing him slowly, causing his breath to come in quick gasps. The scent of cordite and blood hung thick in the air.
Tears spilled down Tapia’s cheeks, and his bowels threatened to flood his pants with fecal matter. The government had discovered his treason, and he knew that seeing Garcia shot dead was just the beginning of the torture that awaited him.
Uzi smacked Tapia across the face to bring him out of the shocked stupor he’d fallen into at seeing his handler so mercilessly murdered. He shoved Tapia toward the wooden chair he’d pulled from under Isabel’s dressing table. Tapia sank into it without question, thankful to be off his feet, but no sooner had Tapia’s butt touched the velvet softness of the mauve-colored cushion than Uzi produced zip ties and cinched Tapia’s right wrist to the chair arm. The government official didn’t bother to struggle. He just wanted his life to end, but he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
The masked man continued to use zip ties to bind both of Tapia’s wrists to the chair arms and then wrapped rope around his upper body, pinning his elbows to his sides. Once Uzi had Tapia’s torso and hands secure, he moved to Tapia’s ankles, using more zip ties to fasten him completely to the chair.
“Do you know who your friend is?” Pistolero taunted. He gave Garcia’s body a brutal kick to the ribs. The air filled with the foulness of Garcia’s bowels letting go. Tapia could taste the coppery odor of blood in his mouth, both his own from being slapped and that of Garcia’s head wound.
Tapia nodded. “Luis Garcia.”
“He is a CIA pig!” Pistolero shouted. “And so are you, pendejo!”
Tapia now understood that these men were from the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional. The SEBIN was the equivalent of the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and U.S. Marshals Service rolled into one unit. They didn’t work the streets like common law enforcement officers but conducted counterintelligence investigations or performed security for the government. Tapia had routinely seen the SEBIN troops around the Capitolio, wearing their full black uniforms and facial coverings so no one would recognize their faces.
The men who had come for Tapia wore civilian clothing, but they were most definitely SEBIN. No other law enforcement agency in Venezuela would dare interfere with their work, especially when there was a CIA spy available for ready torture, which made Tapia wonder why they had shot Garcia so quickly. But judging from the bloody pulp of his swollen face and the fact that the masked men had ripped out all of Garcia’s fingernails, told Tapia that the SEBIN had already gotten what they wanted from the American. Undoubtably, the CIA case officer had given up Tapia’s name, and now the SEBIN had come to torture him.
Pistolero waved his hand in front of his masked face as if to dispel the stink of the dead body. He ordered his compadre to grab Garcia by the arms while he gripped the dead man’s ankles. Together, they picked Garcia up and carried him from the room. Unfortunately, they left a trail of blood and excrement on the tile that still reeked even with the body outside of the room.
Tapia tried to breathe through his mouth, intentionally blocking the smells from entering his nostrils, but he kept having to spit out blood or lick his lips, so he’d inadvertently suck air in through his nose. His olfactory senses triggered a gag reflex. Tapia fought down the wave of vomit trying to force its way out of his body.
He and Isabel were going to die. There was no doubt about it.
“Forgive me, Isabel,” Tapia muttered, but she didn’t seem to hear him, or if she did, she didn’t understand why he was apologizing.
After disposing of Garcia’s body, the return of the two men prevented Tapia from explaining his traitorous actions to his wife.
Pistolero sat on the edge of the bed and held Isabel’s hand. “This is a terrible thing,” he said calmly to her. “I know you are afraid, but we are not here to hurt you. We are interested in the information your husband has passed to the CIA.”
Isabel’s eyes darted toward her husband as she continued to cry. Pistolero wrapped his arm around her shoulder and held her close.
There was a strange juxtaposition between Pistolero’s caring demeanor toward Isabel and his harsh killing of Garcia that made Tapia shiver.
After several minutes of comforting her, Pistolero kissed the older woman on the forehead. He stood and paced the room, holding the suppressed weapon loosely in his hand as Uzi stood by complacently.
“Garcia told us everything,” Pistolero said to Tapia. “Now, you will do the same. We will torture you, but first, you will witness the pain you have inflicted on your wife.”
He pushed Isabel flat on the bed, flicking open a folding knife. The blade momentarily glinted as it reflected the light. Tapia feared the SEBIN agent would kill Isabel. Instead of slicing her bonds, the man slid the knife under her clothing and slowly started to cut away her shirt.
Isabel struggled to break free from the man’s grasp, but her bindings made it impossible.
Bile rose in Tapia’s throat again. What he feared they were about to do to Isabel was worse than death, and no matter how much he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. He tried silently to catch Isabel’s gaze, but she bucked and kicked too violently in her own life-and-death struggle to worry about her husband.
Pistolero put a finger to his lips and said softly, “Quiet, angel. Don’t move. I don’t want to cut you.”
Isabel’s body went rigid as she stared wide-eyed at their captors. Her husband cried at being unable to help her. He had inflicted this pain on his beloved wife.
Pistolero kept cutting away her clothing until Isabel was completely naked. He ran the back of the knife blade over her delicate brown body, raising goosebumps on her flesh and causing her to tremble even more.
Without looking at Tapia, Pistolero asked, “Would you like to see my friend take advantage of this fine lady, or will you tell me what I want to know?”
“I will tell you everything,” Tapia pleaded. “Just, please, leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this.”
“But she has everything to do with your traitorous actions, señor Tapia. You sold your soul for a big house with a swimming pool and cabinets full of food while our people suffer. I assume you did all that to protect your wife and your son and daughter. What about your grandchildren? Do they know you are a traitor?”
Tapia looked away, unable to meet the man’s harsh gaze.
Pistolero snorted as he shook his head sadly. “They will learn soon enough.”
With a quick twist of his wrist, Pistolero sliced the rope holding Isabel’s legs together. Uzi took the action as his cue, and he was suddenly atop her. The bond holding Isabel’s hands together fell away under the knife as Uzi pinned Isabel to the bed.
Standing behind Tapia, Pistolero twisted the traitor’s head up, forcing Tapia to watch as Uzi violated his wife. Isabel did not fight but lay still on the bed, her brown eyes staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, almost as if she’d gone into a catatonic state. Tapia closed his eyes as Uzi grunted and strained over Isabel’s naked body.
Tapia felt the pressure release from his head. When he opened his eyes, he saw Pistolero standing at the head of the bed, gun barrel pressed to the skin between Isabel’s unseeing eyes.
“No, please!” Tapia screamed. “Please don’t kill her.”
“But she is in such great pain, señor. Do you not wish to spare your wife such indignity? Everyone will soon know the suffering you have caused her, and they will all blame you. Your children will never look you in the eye again, and your grandchildren will hate you for causing her such distress.”
“I beg you. Don’t do anything rash. I will tell you everything.”
“You will tell us anyway,” Uzi grunted from atop Isabel, hips still luridly grinding into her flesh. He grinned at Tapia. “First, I will finish my work.”
Tapia closed his eyes and tried to push away the vision of the Uzi’s naked buttocks thrusting against Isabel’s inert body, but there was no way to unsee the image of the masked man violating his wife. The knowledge that he had caused such graphic pain settled heavily upon Tapia’s shoulders, a burden he would forever bear.
The sound of a muted pop caused Tapia’s eyes to snap open.
Isabel lay unmoving on the bed as Uzi continued to have his way with her. She stared impassively at her husband, a third eye opened in her forehead from the suppressed pistol shot, weeping blood to mix with her drying tears. Tapia’s heart broke. He wanted very much to die.
Once Uzi had finished his necrophiliac act and he’d buckled his pants around his waist, he and his fellow SEBIN officer lifted Tapia, still fastened to the chair, and carried him through the house. Tapia knew he would never see his home again. He would never hold his wife and children again, and if he were to face a living Isabel, deep in his heart, Tapia suspected she would never forgive him for helping the Americans.
Tapia wanted to ask where they were taking him, but he knew all too well the horrors of their destination. While Tapia and Pistolero waited in the garage beside the silver Mercedes, Uzi disappeared out the side door.
The sound of a diesel engine heralded his return. Pistolero draped a black hood over Tapia’s head. The wet fabric stunk of blood and sweat and fear. There was a bullet hole in it, allowing Tapia to see a small tunnel of his world. He realized with startling clarity that the hood he now wore had been over Garcia’s head. Pistolero dropped something into his lap, which Tapia guessed was the bag of money by the heft.
They slid Tapia into a van on his back, still bound to the chair.
Tapia knew the men would take him into the heart of Caracas to El Helicoide, the massive SEBIN prison. Initially constructed in the 1950s, then President Meina Angarita had envisioned the three-side pyramid as the world’s first drive-through shopping plaza and a symbol of Venezuela’s modernity. But the mall had not been completed once Angarita had been ousted by a coup, and after languishing for years as an empty shell, Zarate had ordered the SEBIN to take command of it. They had turned it into one of the world’s most notorious prisons, renowned for its human rights abuses.
Over the years, Tapia had heard many horror stories from inside El Helicoide. There were nicknames for some of the overcrowded cells: The Fish Tank, Little Tiger, and Little Hell, but the one the prisoners feared the most was known as Guantanamo. Tapia had never heard of a reason for the name, suspecting they had copied it from the American prison on the island of Cuba. The Guantanamo cell had a reputation as a nightmare of hellish proportions. Hot, cramped, and airless, the twelve-by-twelve-meter room had no lights, no toilets, and no running water with blood and feces covering the walls. Inmates urinated into plastic bottles and defecated onto old newspapers or into plastic bags referred to as “little ships.” When they had nothing else to use, they just shit in a corner.
Tapia closed his eyes and breathed in and out through his mouth, trying not to add his own brand of terror to the already sweat-soaked and bloody hood, but the torture that awaited him was all he could think about. Even the image of Isabel’s catatonic body could not rouse him to anger.
This was all his fault. Tapia had known the consequences when the CIA had recruited him during college, and he had always suspected that, eventually, the SEBIN would catch him.

*
Tapia felt the van slow and come to a stop before the driver switched off the engine.
He didn’t know how long he’d ridden in the vehicle through stop-and-go traffic and along winding bumpy roads. What he did know was that this was where the actual torture would begin. The purpose of being forced to watch the cold-blooded murder of Luis Garcia and then witnessing his wife being brutally raped and killed was just to soften him up. The SEBIN would pull out his teeth, his finger- and toenails, slowly peel his skin off his body, and shove random objects up his rectum. And that was just the beginning.
The two SEBIN officers dragged Tapia from the van and sat him upright in the chair. Blood rushed to the prisoner’s hands and feet, causing them to tingle excruciatingly. He desperately wanted to be released from the chair and to take the hood off his head. To breathe deeply from the air inside his courtyard with the bougainvillea blossoms and the scent of Isabel’s cooking would be heavenly, but he knew that was just a dream now.
There were two clicking sounds, metal striking metal—knives snapping open—and then Tapia was being cut free of his bonds. The thought of one of those knives cutting off his wife’s clothing sent a chill through Tapia’s nearly immobile body. First, they freed his feet, then worked their way up to the rope binding his chest to the chair.
No sooner had the bonds fallen away than Tapia jumped up and tried to flee, but his feeble, blood-starved legs gave way just two steps into his flight, causing him to fall face-first into the dirt.
His two captors laughed at his crazy antics before hauling their prisoner to his feet and marching him over rough ground. Tapia sensed they’d entered a building when his foot struck what he took to be a threshold.
Pistolero and Uzi thrust Tapia forward, and he tumbled onto hard-packed dirt. They pulled the hood from his head, and Tapia blinked rapidly against the light inside the cell. He had expected El Helicoide or even La Tumba, the prison of solitary confinement cells five stories below the new SEBIN headquarters on Plaza Venezuela, but this was neither of those places.
Miguel Tapia found himself in a makeshift prison cell. The bricks that formed the walls were old and flaky. Moisture glistened on them as water seeped through the pores in the mortar and the brick. A bucket to do his business sat in one corner, and an old wood and green canvas army cot gave him a place to sleep.
His two masked captors slammed shut a wooden door made of stout planks and held together by iron strapping that had rusted and corroded but was still stronger than Tapia’s fingers as he clawed at it. He broke two fingernails and embedded a splinter deep under his skin before he gave up and sank to the cold dirt floor. Plucking at his finger, trying to remove the splinter, Tapia quickly realized he would never get it out without tweezers or some other tool. The pain was an intense reminder of why Tapia was in the cell, to begin with, and it served as penance for the suffering he had caused his wife.
Pounding on the door drew no one’s attention. Tapia could feel the walls closing in around him. There was no way out.
Then, the single overhead lightbulb in a metal cage winked out, plunging him into utter darkness.

CHAPTER 2
Ankoko Island, Venezuela

A dark green Mil Mi-17 helicopter lumbered overhead, flying just above the treetops as it crisscrossed the length of the disputed island.
John Phoenix suspected the occupants were conducting an aerial survey of the airstrip. He noted the time and date of the helicopter’s movements in his waterproof notebook as he swatted a mosquito buzzing his ear. Despite the heavy application of insect repellent, it didn’t seem to keep the flying pests away.
“Fuck me,” Phoenix muttered as he lay in the jungle near the end of the airstrip that the Venezuelan military had cleared in 1966, right after Guyana had received independence from the United Kingdom. Despite the many protests of the Guyanese government, the Venezuelans hadn’t relinquished their new outpost. In fact, Venezuela claimed that over half of Guyana belonged to them in a long-standing territorial dispute that harkened back to colonial days.
Over the years, Venezuela had done little but lodge protests in international courts. But once ExxonMobil discovered major oil deposits off the coast of Guyana in 2015, dictator Michel Zarate had upped his rhetoric against his neighbor.
First, there were detainments of Guyanese fishing vessels by Venezuelan navy ships in Guyana’s Economic Exclusive Zone. Then Zarate had issued a decree creating a “Strategic Zone for the Development of the Atlantic Facade” in an area that Guyana claimed encompassed its territorial waters. The most recent aggression by Venezuela was the flight of Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets over the village of Eteringbang on the Cuyuní River just downstream from Ankoko Island.
And hence the reason John Phoenix was lying in the dirt, sweating his ass off in the jungle. He’d been to worse places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the sand got into everything, including the crack of one’s ass. Phoenix didn’t mind the jungle, maybe because his mother was Colombian, and even in the brutal heat of Texas summers, he’d never seen her break a sweat.
The Mi-17 made another pass over the airstrip and then came in for a landing, spreading dust and debris across the barren airstrip. Usually, when the military helicopters set down, soldiers burst forth, fleeing the eggbeater like their lives were in jeopardy, but no one exited this bird.
Phoenix fitted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and gazed down the length of the runway at the helicopter. Through the helos’ front windows, Phoenix could see the pilots wore military green flight suits and white helmets, their dark visors down. The binoculars also contained a laser rangefinder, displaying the distance to the bird in the right lens, while the left lens housed a digital camera. Resting his finger on the shutter button, Phoenix documented the visitors.
Once the rotors had stopped turning on the Russian-made helicopter and the pilots had shut the turbine engines down, the door to the rear compartment slid open. Four men stepped out wearing khaki cargo pants and matching bush shirts with rolled-down sleeves. Phoenix pegged them for Russians based on their fair skin, rounded noses, and dirty blond hair. They had the ramrod posture of men who’d served in the military, and if Phoenix had to guess, they were probably on Ankoko to act as military advisors to the Venezuelan Army.
A Tiuna UR-53AR50, a Venezuelan-made light utility vehicle similar to an American Humvee, drove out of the trees and stopped by the knot of newcomers. A man wearing the uniform of a general stepped out. He shook hands with the civilians, who were already appraising the airstrip and the surrounding environs. Phoenix wished he had a parabolic mic to eavesdrop on their conversation.
Eventually, the men all got into the Tiuna and drove away, leaving the pilots to walk, helmets in hand, to the small cluster of buildings that comprised the outpost.
Phoenix would have dearly loved to learn exactly who the newcomers were and what they were doing at the base, but he couldn’t stick around. At least he had pictures of the entire entourage to send back to Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. And he’d have to write a report. One thing he’d learned at The Farm while undertaking the Clandestine Service Training program to become a case officer was that he would spend more time drafting reports than actually conducting field exercises, which was another reason he enjoyed being in Guyana. There was little oversight of his activities, and he only wrote reports once a week. Most of the time, he was in his hide, watching, waiting, and gathering intelligence.
He had to leave tonight, though. His supplies were running low, and he had a scheduled rendezvous with a fishing boat that would take him downstream to the town of Eteringbang. While it was still light enough to see, Phoenix checked his hide to ensure he hadn’t left any trash or other litter behind that would warn others that he’d been spying on the base.
As Phoenix backed out of his hide, the suspected Russians reappeared and began unloading equipment from the helicopter. Their big yellow cases contained survey equipment, which they quickly set up.
Phoenix speculated on the rumors he’d heard on his way to Eteringbang. After Guyana had dispatched advisors to investigate whether Venezuela was about to broaden and lengthen the Ankoko Island airstrip, they claimed the rumors weren’t true, but the CIA had suspected otherwise, and now surveyors were actively working the area.
After snapping off more photos, Phoenix wiggled backward from his hide and brushed leaves over the spot where he’d lain. Then, he quietly made his way to the river.
Squatting by the bank, Phoenix gritted his teeth. His idea of a fun time wasn’t swimming through caiman-infested waters to wait for the boat to reach his pickup point, but he didn’t want to hang around the water’s edge either. He checked his watch, then cinched his waterproof rucksack tighter on his shoulders. With the survey crew working the runway, he had little choice but to exit the area lest they beat through the brush and find him.
Slipping on a pair of diving fins designed to go over his combat boots, Phoenix waded into the water and began kicking toward a distant island in the center of the river. It was more like a sandbar that trees had sprouted on, but it was better than treading water. The Cuyuní River was plagued with things that could kill a man in a heartbeat—caimans, giant snakes, swarms of piranhas, the occasional bull shark that had snuck in from the ocean, and of course the deadliest of all predators: man, and the many diseases infesting the shits they frequently took in the river.
The sound of an outboard reached Phoenix’s ears as he swam. Before long, a six-meter wooden boat appeared, being pushed by a seventy-five-horsepower outboard. The boat’s owner had festively painted it with hues of bright green, blue, and orange. A lone man sat at the tiller and angled the bow toward Phoenix’s position in the water.
Seconds later, the boat coasted to a stop, and Axel, the owner, reached out a hand to the CIA case officer. Phoenix grabbed Axel’s hand and clambered aboard. Axle returned to the tiller, swinging the boat in a wide arc before heading back downstream.
“Slow down as we pass the ferry,” Phoenix ordered.
Axel dropped their speed to a mere idle as they approached the town of Ancón on the northern bank of the Cuyuní. The town was just a collection of huts in a short row, but at the eastern end, there was a ferry to ship people and supplies across the river to the military base on Ankoko.
The Venezuelans had a major advantage over the Guyanese. They had cut a network of roads through the dense jungle to bring in gear and supplies. A single dirt track led from Ancón out to Route 10, a major paved road that stretched from the Brazilian border in the south to the Caribbean Sea in the north.
As the boat drifted with the current, Phoenix swatted at another mosquito that buzzed his ear. Despite the arrival of the helicopter at the airstrip, there was no enhanced guard presence at the ferry terminal. Axel cast a line, pretending to be fishing as the Venezuelan troops would quickly run off anyone who stopped along the river near their crossing.
Phoenix motioned for Axel to head out before someone took notice of them. The Guyanese quickly reeled in his line and restarted the outboard. He increased their speed, cutting through the silt-stained water, leaving a wide, creamy wake behind them.
Three miles downstream, the Cuyuní joined the Wenamu River, and another couple of miles through the twisting confluence, they came to Eteringbang. The tiny village wasn’t much more than a single street beside the river, lined with brothels, nightclubs, and restaurants, with several convenience stores and a hardware supply. Most of the buildings and homes sat on stilts, but in the not-too-distant past, a flood had ravaged the city and destroyed many of the properties. However, the hearty settlers and natives had rebuilt, using whatever scraps of wood and tin they could find.
Living in the tiny outpost in what the Guyanese government called the “Hinterland” wasn’t easy. With Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, an hour’s flight away and no roads through the Essequibo Region, supplies were limited to what the ferries brought upriver. The primary occupation of the outpost was illegal mining in the mineral-rich jungle, and with no bank in town, the currency of Eteringbang had shifted to gold.
Axel steered his boat up to the concrete quay beside a long row of other such boats that contained plastic barrels, improvising a fleet of floating oil trucks that served the miners and the surrounding community.
Phoenix shouldered his pack, having tucked everything neatly away, and bumped fists with his native friend who knew Phoenix was a CIA officer, as Axel had worked with the CIA to keep tabs on the Venezuelan base on Ankoko for years.
“Not a blade of grass,” Axel said.
The Guyanese had taken the statement from the song of the same name written by Dave Martins, an iconic Guyanese composer and comedian. Martins maintained that the song was purely about the Guyanese people’s deep affection for Guyana and everything Guyanese, but others argued he had written it with the border threat in mind. Despite the disagreements over the song’s origins, the Guyanese people sang the song as passionately as they did their national anthem.
Axel’s statement meant that the Guyanese wouldn’t allow Venezuela to take any more of Guyana’s land beyond what they already possessed, but Phoenix knew that if Michel Zarate desired to conquer his neighbor, the forty-six-hundred-member strong Guyana Defence Force would be powerless to stop him.
On his way to his hotel, Phoenix waved to one of the police officers who occasionally patrolled the town. The officer had dressed casually in flip-flops and shorts with a machine gun slung over his bare chest. A large gold chain glistened around his neck, and Phoenix thought it was probably the result of a bribe someone had paid the cop.
Phoenix’s hotel, another ramshackle building along the river that had been divided into sleeping rooms, also operated as a brothel. Many of the young women were Venezuelans tricked into believing they were signing up for a better life, but in reality, they had what they called “survival sex,” earning half a gram of gold for each male they serviced—barely enough for room and board for a single woman, yet most sex workers had at least one child to provide for. It sickened and saddened Phoenix to see the levels of depravity these women had to stoop to in order to provide for themselves.
As he climbed the stairs to the upper deck, Phoenix tried not to think about the impoverished people he met or the plight of those around him. He yawned, wondering if sleeping in the bush was more comfortable than sleeping on the thin mattress in his room. But it didn’t matter. The Army had taught him how to sleep just about anywhere.
A hooker named Bambi called out to him, propositioning Phoenix just like she did every time she saw him.
Waving her off, Phoenix continued to his room. As a precaution for this mission, he’d brought only what he could fit into his rucksack to Eteringbang and had carried everything with him into the bush. He was thankful he’d left nothing behind as he saw the door to his room was standing wide open. Phoenix entered, half expecting a hooker and her John to be doing it on his bed, but thankfully, he found no one inside.
Well, at least not me, Phoenix mused, another John.
Phoenix had learned early in his life that his first name often had negative connotations, and he’d usually dealt with those situations with flying fists. People often referred to a person who could be easily taken advantage of as a “John,” but John Phoenix was no dummy, and he was not a man many could take advantage of unless he allowed it. And there were few people in the world he would allow to use him. His employer was usually the one who bent him over the table and made him their plaything. He was the CIA’s “John.”
After closing the door to his room, Phoenix tossed his pack onto the bed and pulled out his satellite phone. Having turned it off several days ago, Phoenix figured he’d better check if his handler, Leslie Connelly—assistant chief of the Latin America Division and the only person with the number to his phone—had left him any messages.
Moving back outside, Phoenix let the phone connect to the satellites orbiting high overhead. He walked along the street, checking the phone as he stepped up to a counter attached to the side of a house that acted as a tavern. Through the open window, he ordered a beer. By the time he had his cold Banks DIH Caribbean Lager in hand, the phone was pinging irritatingly with text and voicemail messages.
Phoenix sipped his beer and opened the messaging app. He wished he’d left the phone off. A crisis had developed in Caracas, and Connelly wanted him to get off his ass and get moving.
Walking down the street toward a quiet corner, Phoenix sipped his beer and listened to the escalating voicemails, starting from “Where are you, Bowie?” to “If you don’t answer the fucking phone, I’m going to kill you.”
Being from Texas, Phoenix had picked up the code name Bowie after the knife maker and frontiersman who had perished so infamously at the Alamo. When his old boss at Ground Branch, Chris Miller, had bestowed it on Phoenix, the operator hadn’t liked it at first, but the name had stuck, and he even used the first name of Jim as a cover alias.
Phoenix dialed the number for Connelly, then lifted the phone to his ear. He took another swallow of beer as the phone rang on the other end.
Connelly answered with, “This is Nightingale. Say ident.”
Phoenix gave his credentials to verify his identity to his handler and then asked. “What’s so important that I’m not watching a team of Russians survey the Ankoko airport?”
Unfazed by his revelation, Connelly said, “Get to the Eteringbang airport. I have a plane waiting to fly you to Georgetown, and I have a team locked and loaded.”
“A team of Ground Branch shooters?” he asked.
“No. They’re contractors. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”
“What’s the mission?” he asked, wanting to have at least some idea of what Connelly was throwing at him.
Without hesitation, his handler said, “Bowie, you’re going into Venezuela to retrieve our asset.”

CHAPTER 3
“The team needs to come to me,” Phoenix said into the phone.
If Connelly had a team ready to fly, then they should have been waiting in Eteringbang for him to return from the field.
“I want to brief you in Georgetown,” Leslie Connelly replied.
Phoenix let out a long sigh. He was used to high-pressure situations and dealing with the whims and demands of his chain of command, but sending him on a hasty mission into the heart of darkness was something he could do without. Then again, that’s why they paid him a below-average salary—to save the world. After all, he was the CIA’s “John.”
“Where’s the asset?” he asked.
“Outside Caracas,” Connelly replied.
“Eteringbang to Georgetown, Georgetown to Caracas. That’s a lot of travel time, Nightingale. We’re putting the asset in jeopardy by not being on the move already.”
“You were in the bush, Bowie. And honestly, that’s where you belong.”
Phoenix snorted, used to Connelly sniping at him. That’s what he got for having a relationship with his fellow case officer. How she had ever become his handler, he didn’t know or like. He preferred sleeping with her to taking orders from her.
“But I need you here, so stop drinking beer and get on the plane already,” Connelly added.
The phone went dead in Phoenix’s hand, and he headed for his room, wondering how she knew he’d been drinking a beer. But then again, she had always been excellent at reading him.
Fortunately, no one had tampered with the lock on his door, and his pack was still on the bed where he’d left it. Phoenix didn’t bother to inventory it. If someone had stolen from him, he’d never retrieve his property. He just slung the pack over his shoulder and headed for the exit. As he passed Bambi, who wore a bright pink bikini top and cut-off jean shorts that she’d trimmed so high that her bony brown ass cheeks hung out, she propositioned him once again.
With a pocket full of gold dust in one-gram bags, Phoenix could probably buy every hooker in the hotel and have one helluva party, but he wasn’t about to dip his wick into any of the ladies he’d met on this trip. Pulling a couple of bags of gold dust from his pocket, he handed them to the woman and said, “Take the day off, Bambi.”
She stared at the bags as he turned to walk off, then she jumped up and threw her arms around him, planting a big, wet kiss on his scruffy cheek. “Gracias, mi amor.”
After untangling himself from Bambi’s amorous clutches, Phoenix hurried down the street to where the boats sat along the concrete quay. It took a few minutes for him to find Axel, who was lounging in the shade of a bar, drinking a beer. Once they linked up, they were in the boat moments later, speeding upriver toward the airstrip.
The ride through the muddy water in the high-horsepower boat was heavenly compared to the oppressive heat and humidity of the Amazon basin, and the wind kept the mosquitoes away.
Phoenix muddied his boots as he stepped from the bow of the boat onto land. He pulled more gold packets from his pocket and dropped them into Axel’s hand, saying, “Not a blade of grass, brother.”
Axel grinned as he took the gold. He put the motor into reverse as Phoenix shoved the boat off the bank, and then the CIA case officer headed up the wide trail to the dirt landing strip, a gash of ochre scratched into the verdant jungle landscape.
A Cessna 208 Caravan sat at the end of the runway beside another Cessna with the markings of Fenix Aviation on its side. Phoenix smiled at the misspelling of his last name and opened the door to the tiny building that served as a terminal. He immediately spotted his pilot, a fellow American who still wore his aviator shades indoors. Phoenix figured he’d been a hotshot Air Force jet slinger that the CIA had lured into flying for one of their many contract carriers. The paychecks were bigger, but the planes were a lot slower.
Phoenix motioned with a nod of his head toward the plane without stepping all the way inside the terminal building. The pilot stood and came toward him.
Outside, the man asked, “You Bowie?”
“Yeah. Let’s get going,” Phoenix replied.
“Good,” the pilot said. “I’ve already filed the flight plan.”
The two men walked to the Cessna Caravan and climbed in. They donned headsets, and then the pilot, who introduced himself as Orville Wright, started the engine. After talking to airport control, the pilot taxied them onto the runway, and moments later, they were in the air, flying at 344 kilometers per hour over the lush green jungle. Guyana had little in the way of roads or infrastructure in the interior. For centuries, the impoverished country had sparse money to spend on large projects, and carving roads through the Amazon basin was tricky at best and an expensive nightmare at worst.
Phoenix took his gaze off the passing scenery, leaned back in the seat, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. He had other problems to worry about than how Guyana chose to spend its newfound oil wealth.
A man’s life was in jeopardy, and the CIA had called Phoenix to save it.

*
John Phoenix’s eyes snapped open as the Cessna Caravan’s tires chirped on the asphalt runway.
Glancing around, he saw they had landed at Eugene F. Correia International Airport at the eastern edge of Georgetown. Orville Wright taxied them off the main runway toward a small hangar.
Phoenix saw his handler standing beside a Toyota Hilux. Leslie Connelly still looked as beautiful as ever to Phoenix despite all the heartache they’d put each other through.
Nightingale wore charcoal slacks with a matching jacket and a white blouse. The wind teased her loose black hair, and her lips had a hard set to them. Phoenix had fond memories of being her lover, lying in bed, holding hands, admiring the espresso color of her dark skin against his own light brown.
Despite being part Comanche, Phoenix’s father was as white as he could get, while his mother was Colombian. Phoenix had inherited his mother’s black hair, brown eyes, and olive complexion. In the right light, he could pass as a Latino, or as an Arab, or just an average white guy. Able to speak English and Spanish by the time he was walking, he’d picked up some French in high school and conversational Arabic in Iraq to enhance his utility as a case officer.
Growing up in Texas, along the banks of the South Concho River, Phoenix’s father, Hank, had been a skilled tracker and outdoor guide, taking people on hunting and fishing trips. It was on one of those guide trips that Hank had found a woman in the desert, badly dehydrated and left for dead. He’d brought her into his home and had nursed the young woman back to health. Marisol, an undocumented immigrant, had stayed by Hank’s side, becoming his wife and giving birth to John. Their home had been a happy one. As a young boy, Phoenix had learned his father’s trade, becoming a renowned tracker in his own right, and helped supplement the table by catching fish and hunting for game.
But the happy family had been torn apart when Phoenix was fifteen. A drunk driver had struck and killed his parents as they returned from San Angelo. At the time, John had been on an extended hunting trip and had missed the sheriff’s deputy, who had come to give him the devastating news and take him to Child Protective Services.
Phoenix had hidden in the bush for months to cope. He often saw the sheriff’s patrol cars stopping by the house to check on him, and had studiously avoided any interactions with law enforcement.
Then, one day, he received a visit from Paul Shaffer, whom Phoenix knew from attending church with his parents. Shaffer claimed he’d spoken to CPS, and they would allow the Shaffers to foster young John. After moving to San Angelo, Phoenix returned to school, but without the ability to escape into the bush, he often felt lost. Adrift in a sea of pain and loneliness, he began a torrid affair with Angela, the Shaffers’ youngest daughter. Angela, trying to cope with her own demons, joined some friends for a night of partying and underage drinking in Abilene to celebrate their high school graduation, but the night had taken a wrong turn, and she’d called Phoenix for help.
In the process of saving Angela from the frat house, where she had been drugged and raped, Phoenix had accidentally set fire to the building. It hadn’t taken the police long to track down the culprit, and they quickly arrested Phoenix. A lenient judge had understood Phoenix’s righteous anger, and he’d presented the eighteen-year-old arsonist with a choice—join the Army or go to jail. Phoenix had signed his enlistment papers while still in handcuffs, and two days later, he was on a bus to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. From there, it was Airborne School, a stint in the 75th Ranger Battalion, and then on to Special Forces. He’d picked up a bachelor’s degree in Homeland Security from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University before joining the CIA. He’d been recruited to the agency as a paramilitary case officer, spent a few years downrange with the Special Activities Center, and then transitioned to case officer, running his own assets in the field.
But all that was ancient history to the John Phoenix who stepped out of the Cessna. Phoenix tried not to show any emotion at the sight of Connelly. The situation must have been desperate for her to fly all the way to Guyana just to brief him. Carrying his pack, he walked toward the Toyota, but before he could greet the assistant chief, she turned and headed for the open hangar door.
Phoenix had to let his eyes adjust to the darker interior of the hangar as he followed Connelly inside. Two men and a woman stood beside a table, checking weapons and gear. There were H&K MP5 submachine guns, Glock 19 pistols, and two Russian-made SVDM Dragunov sniper rifles. They had also laid out an assortment of other kits on the freshly swept concrete floor, each row corresponding to a backpack, which corresponded to each member of the four-person team.
Connelly paused at the table. “John, you know Kendra, Sam, and TJ, don’t you?”
Phoenix shook each of their hands. In the CIA, regardless of rank, everyone went by their first names as a security precaution designed to protect their true identities.
“Good to see all of you again,” Phoenix said.
Not long ago, members of this same team had helped Phoenix with an operation called Dark Angel. They had prevented an Iranian front company from stealing advanced submarine propulsion technology from MCG Marine Defense, an American corporation with its testing and assembly plant in New Amsterdam, Guyana.
While Phoenix knew better than to ask where the other members of Dark Angel were, he couldn’t help himself. Turning to TJ, he asked, “Where’s Ryan?”
“He’s somewhere on his sailboat right now.” TJ shrugged. “I stayed behind with Kendra.”
Phoenix had liked Ryan Weller, a capable and skilled troubleshooter for hire. The two men had worked closely on the Dark Angel operation, and he would have liked to have Ryan along for this one, but the group in the hangar had also proved their mettle during that op, and Phoenix knew he could trust them when things went loud.
Kendra and Slater moved off to check other gear, and Phoenix asked TJ a follow-up question. “What did Ryan think about you and Kendra? I know they had a history together.”
TJ shrugged. “What’s he going to say? He’s married to another woman.” He turned his back on the case officer to pack his gear into one of the black backpacks.
Phoenix walked over to where Connelly was looking over the gear selection, thinking about his history with her. Instead of bringing up better times, he asked, “How are we getting to Caracas?”
Connelly spread a map on a nearby workbench and pointed to a little dot on it. “There’s a dirt strip near La Quintería. Orville Wright will fly your team up, and you’ll drive to Caracas from there.”
“How long is the drive?” Phoenix asked.
“Eight hours, give or take,” Connelly replied.
Phoenix rubbed his chin as he looked at the map. “Where’s this guy being held? El Helicoide?”
“Nothing so nefarious,” Connelly said. “Our electronic tracker says the SEBIN are holding him in a small compound outside Caracas.”
“You have a tracker on this guy?” Phoenix asked. “How did the VZs not catch it?”
“It didn’t activate until the asset was taken,” Connelly replied.
“Gear’s all set,” Kendra said, walking over to the two CIA officers.
From their previous interaction, Phoenix knew Kendra Diaz had once been a sicario for the Aztlán Cartel. She was good with a gun and even deadlier with a knife. At just 167cm, or five-feet-six-inches tall, Kendra was a beautiful Mexican woman with silky black hair and soulful brown eyes.
TJ Cab had black hair spiked up with gel at the front and sunbaked skin from working as a fishing guide in the Florida Everglades between jobs with Ryan Weller and his merry band of misfits at Dark Water Research. TJ had been a U.S. Navy boatswain’s mate who’d served in the combat-heavy Coastal Riverine Squadrons. He was compact and muscular at five-eight, or 173cm, and his blue eyes scanned the gear with an economy of motion that said he’d been doing this kind of thing for years.
Slater Harden had married Kendra’s younger sister after their arrival in Guyana. He’d helped them build a security company catering to executive protection, security monitoring, and armed airport escort services. He was a lean, tall man with long blond hair tied up in a man bun, looking more like a surf bum than a former Air Force pararescue specialist.
“When do we get the full mission brief?” Phoenix asked his handler.
“Right now,” Connelly replied. “I have briefing packets for all of you to read on the plane. Once you land, burn them completely.”
“Copy that,” Phoenix said, inspecting the prearranged gear package before he stowed it into the provided backpack.
The hangar was owned by a CIA shell corporation, allowing for quick flight service. Also, it provided Phoenix with a place to leave his own backpack until he returned from Venezuela. Phoenix placed his kit from the previous mission into a locker, confident he would be returning to Ankoko Island based on the photographs he’d handed over to Connelly on an SD card. He thoroughly inspected his new weapons, and then the team boarded the plane for Venezuela.
Staring out the window as the Cessna took off, Phoenix couldn’t help but wonder how truly fucked this mission was.

Publisher: Third Reef Publishing, LLC
Publication Date: June 8, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9920981-7-4
Print Length: unavailable
File Size: 3 files at 1MB
Language: English
Series Information: A John Phoenix Box Set
Book: 1 - 3
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